The Interview Method: Advantages and Limitations | Social Research

After reading this article you will learn about the advantages and disadvantages of the interview method of conducting social research.

Advantages of the Interview Method:

(1) The personal interviews, compared especially to questionnaires usually yield a high percentage of returns.

(2) The interview method can be made to yield an almost perfect sample of the general population because practically everyone can be reached by and can respond to this approach. It will be remembered that the questionnaire approach is severely limited by the fact that only the literate persons can be covered by it.

Again, the observational approach is also subject to limitations because many things or facts cannot be observed on the spot.

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(3) The information secured through interviews is likely to be more correct compared to that secured through other techniques. The interviewer who is present on the spot can clear up the seemingly inaccurate or irrelevant answers by explaining the questions to the informant. If the informant deliberately falsifies replies, the interviewer is able to effectively check them and use special devices to verify the replies.

(4) The interviewer can collect supplementary information about the informant’s personal characteristics and environment which is often of great value in interpreting results. Interview is a much more flexible approach, allowing for posing of new questions or check-questions if such a need arises.

Its flexibility makes the interview a superior technique for the exploration of areas where there is little basis for knowing what questions to ask and how to formulate them.

(5) In as much as the interviewer is present on the spot, he can observe the facial expressions and gestures etc., of the informants as also the existing pressures obtaining in the interview-situation. The facility of such observations helps the interviewer to evaluate the meaning of the verbal replies given by informants.

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For example, hesitation, particular inhibitive reactions etc., may give rise to certain doubts about the reliability of the responses and the interviewer may then ask indirect questions to verify his doubts.

(6) Scoring and test-devices can be used, the interviewer acting as experimenter. At the same time, visual stimuli to which the informant may react can be presented.

(7) The use of interview method ensures greater number of usable returns compared to other methods. Returned visits to complete items on the schedule or to correct mistakes can usually be made without annoying the informant.

(8) The interviewer can usually control which person or persons will answer the questions. This is not possible in the mailed questionnaire approach. If so desired and warranted group discussions may also be held.

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(9) A personal interview may take long enough to allow the informant to become oriented to the topic under investigation. Thus, recall of relevant information is facilitated. The informant can be made to devote more time if, as is the case, the interviewer is present on the spot to elicit and record the information.

The interviewer’s presence is a double headed weapon, the advantageous aspect of it being that face-to-face contact provides enough stimulation to the respondent to probe deeper within himself. As we have suggested, interviewer acts as a catalyst.

(10) The interviewer may catch the informant off his guard and thus secure the most spontaneous reactions than would be the case if mailed questionnaire were used.

(11) The interview method allows for many facilities which aid on the spot adjustments and thus ensure rich response material. For example, the interviewer can carefully sandwich the questions about which the informant is likely to be sensitive.

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The interviewer can also change the subject by observing informant’s reactions or give explanations if the interviewee needs them. In other words, a delicate situation can usually be handled more effectively by personal interview method.

(12) The language of the interview can be adapted to the ability or educational level of the person interviewed. Therefore, it is comparatively easy to avoid misinterpretations or misleading questions.

(13) The interview is a more appropriate technique for revealing information about complex, emotionally-laden subjects or for probing the sentiments underlying an expressed opinion.

Major Limitations of the Interview Method:

(1) In terms of cost, energy and time, the interview approach poses a heavy demand. The transportation cost and the time required to cover addresses in a large area as also possibility of non-availability or ‘not at home’, may make the interview method uneconomical and often inoperable.

(2) The efficacy of interviews depends on a thorough training and skill of interviewers as also on a rigorous supervision over them. Failing this, data recorded may be inaccurate and incomplete.

(3) The human equation may distort the returns. If an interviewer has a certain bias, he may unconsciously devise questions so as to secure confirmation of his views.

(4) The presence of the interviewer on the spot may over stimulate the respondent, sometimes even to the extent that he may give imaginary information just to make it interesting. He may tell things about which he may not himself be very sure.

He may also get emotionally involved with the interviewer and give answers that he anticipates would please the interviewer. It is also possible that the interviewer’s presence may inhibit free responses because there is no anonymity. The respondent may hesitate to give correct answers for the fear that it would adversely affect his image. Some fear of this information being used against him may grip him.

(5) In the interview method, the organization required for selecting, training and supervising a field staff is more complex.

(6) It is the usual experience that costs per interview are higher when field investigators are employed. This is especially so when the area to be covered is widely spread out.

(7) The personal interview usually takes more time. Sometimes, the interview lasts for hours on end and the interviewer cannot check the free flow of the respondent’s replies for fear that it may disrupt the ‘rapport.’ Added to this is the time spent for journeys to and fro to the addresses and the possibility of not always being able to meet them.

(8) Effective interview presupposes proper rapport with the respondent and controlling of interview atmosphere in a manner that would facilitate free and frank responses. This is often a very difficult requirement, it needs time, skills and often resources.

Secondly, it is not always possible for the interviewer to judge whether the interview atmosphere is how it should ideally be and whether or not ‘rapport’ has been established.

(9) Interviewing may also introduce systematic errors. For example, if the interviews are conducted at their homes during the day, a majority of informants will be housewives. Now if the information is to be obtained from the male members, most of the field-work will have to be done in the evening or on holidays. If this be the case, only a few hours can be used per week for interviewing.

(10) Many actions human beings carry out are not easily verbalized, but easily observed. Through observation a social process may be followed as it develops. Verbal techniques such as interview may give valuable reports, but post hoc, unless one is dealing with rather unusual respondents capable of acting and being interviewed at the same time.

Some of the prerequisites that ensure successful interviewing. The quality of interviewing depends, firstly on a proper study-design. It should be noted that even the most skilled interviewer will not be able to collect valid and useful data, if the schedule of questions is inadequate or unrelated to the objectives of research.

If a well-designed, standardized schedule can elicit the required information, a staff of ordinary men and women, properly selected, and trained, can serve well enough.

Within the limits of a study-design, there is some room for the art of interviewing to come into play. Interviewing is an art governed by certain scientific principles. The interviewer’s art consists in creating a situation wherein the respondents’ answers will be reliable and valid.

This ideal requires a permissive situation in which the respondent is encouraged to voice his frank opinion without the fear of his attitudes being revealed to others.

The basic requirement of successful interviewing, understandably, is to create a friendly atmosphere; on of trust and confidence that will put the respondent at ease. Through subsequent stages, the interviewer’s art consists in asking questions properly and intelligently, in obtaining a valid and meaningful response and in recording the responses accurately and completely.

Let us consider how the interviewer can create a friendly interview atmosphere. It is the interviewer’s approach that really does the trick. The interviewer should introduce himself briefly and explain clearly the purpose of his study.

Interviewer’s approach should be positive. His aim should be to interview everyone included in the sample. It is possible that a small proportion of respondents will be suspicious or hostile and the large number may require a little encouragement and persuasion.

Many people ar6 flattered to be selected for an interview. The interviewer should answer any legitimate questions and clear any doubt the respondent has. He should also if need be, explain that the respondent should not be afraid of being identified and that interview is not a test and that the interviewer just wants to know how people feel about certain issues and the only way to find out, is to ask them.

The interviewer’s manners should be friendly, courteous, conversational and unbiased. He should represent the golden mean — neither too grim, nor too effusive, neither too talkative nor too timid. The main idea should be to put the respondent at ease so that he will talk freely and fully.

It helps if the interview starts with the casual conversation about weather, pets or children. An informal conversational interview, above all, is dependent upon a thorough mastery by the interviewer over the actual questions in the schedule.

He should be able to ask them conversationally rather than real them stiffly. He should know what questions are coming next so that there will be no awkward disruption of smooth interaction. Fundamentally, the interviewer’s job is that of a reporter.

He should not act as an adviser, custodian of morality, curio-seeker or debator. He should not show surprise or disapproval of a respondent’s answer. He should show an interested disposition toward his respondent’s opinion. On his own, he should never divulge his own. The interviewer must keep the direction of interview in his Own hand, discouraging irrelevant conversation and trying to keep the respondent on the track.

Next, we turn to consider how the interviewer should ask his questions. The interviewer must be alert to the importance of asking each question exactly as it is worded unless the interview is unstructured. Interviewers should remember that even a slight rewording of a question can so change the stimulus as to elicit answers in a different frame of reference.

The interviewer should refrain from giving unwarranted explanation of questions because this also may change the frame of reference, or inject bias into the response. If each interviewer were permitted to vary the questions according to his sweet will, the resulting responses recorded by different interviewers may not be comparable.

If at all the interviewer has to offer any explanation to the respondents, he should offer only those that he has specifically been authorized to do. Should the respondent fail to understand the question, the interviewer may advisedly repeat it slowly and with proper emphasis.

Questions must be asked in the sequence they appear on the schedule. Varying this order will change the respondent’s frame of reference since each question sets up a frame of reference for the following questions. Thus, if the sequences vary from interviewer to interviewer, the responses will not be comparable. The interviewer must make it a point to ask every question, unless directions permit skipping a few.

It may seem that the respondent has given his opinion on a subsequent question in answering an earlier question, but he must nevertheless ask the question in order to be sure.

A question may appear to be naive or inapplicable but the interviewer should never omit asking it. Wherever necessary and appropriate, the interviewer should preface the question with certain conversational phrases to maintain continuity and tempo.

We shall now consider another important requirement of successful interviewing. It is often difficult as interviewers have often experienced, to obtain a specific complete response. This is perhaps the most difficult part of his job. Respondents often qualify or hedge their opinions.

They often answer, ‘do not know’ just to avoid thinking about the question, they misinterpret the question, divert the process of interview by launching off an irrelevant discussion or they give self-contradictory answers. In all these cases the interviewer has to probe deeper.

The test of a good interviewer is that he is alert to incomplete or nonspecific answers. Each interviewer must understand fully the overall objective of each question and what it is precisely trying to measure. A pre-test on the interviewers helps to equip them with such understanding.

The interviewer should be able to ask himself after every reply the respondent gives whether the question is completely answered. If the respondent’s answer is vague or diffuse or incomplete, effective probe questions should be asked.

The interviewer must be careful at every stage, not to suggest a possible reply, that is, the interviewer should riot ask leading questions (i.e., put words into the subject’s mouth). The “don’t know” reply is another problem of the interviewer.

Sometimes, this response may be due to a genuine lack of opinion or knowledge, but at other times it may be a cloak wittingly or unwittingly used by the interviewee to hide many attitudes, fear, reluctance, vague opinions, lack of understanding, etc. The interviewer should distinguish between the different types of’ don’t-know response’ and repeat the questions with suitable assurances.

An important consideration in successful interviewing relates to recording the responses of interviewees. There are two chief means of recording responses during the interview. If the question is a fixed alternative one, the interviewer need only mark or check an appropriate category. But if the question is open-ended, the interviewer is expected to record the response, verbatim.

On pre-coded schedules, errors and omissions in recording the replies are a frequent source of interview-error. In the midst of various tasks that the interviewer is supposed to perform in the course of interviews, viz., trying to pin the respondent down to a specific answer, remembering the sequence of questions, observing facial expressions etc., the interviewer may sometimes neglect to indicate the respondent’s reply to some item, overlook a particular question or check the wrong category, etc.

Even the best interviewer should, therefore, make it a habit to inspect each interview to make sure that it is filled in accurately and completely.

If any information is lacking he should go back and ask the respondent for it. He should correct the errors and omissions in the schedules on the spot. If he has recorded verbatim replies only sketchily, he should correct the weakness right there. It is not at all proper to wait until later in the day or until he returns home at night, since by then he may have forgotten quite a few crucial circumstances of the interview.

The interviewer should understand that the omission or inaccurate reporting of a single answer can make the entire interview worthless since the schedule is designed as an integral whole.

In reporting responses to open-ended or free answer questions, the interviewer should give complete, verbatim reporting. It may often be difficult to fulfill this requirement, but apart from obvious irrelevancies and repetitions, this should be the goal.

It is necessary that the interviewers have some idea of the coding process. This will ensure that they are able to record responses in such a manner that the coders will be able to reconstruct the whole set of responses correctly in a codified form.

The interviewer should ideally quote the respondents exactly. Paraphrasing the replies, summarizing them in one’s own words or “polishing up” any slang or cursing etc., not only might distort the respondent’s meanings and emphases but also miss the tenor of his replies.

Although it is frequently difficult to record responses verbatim without using short­hand, a few simple techniques can greatly increase the interviewer’s speed and honest reproduction.

The interviewer can ask the subject to wait until the interviewer has written the last thought but this may slow down the interview and may have certain adverse effects. In order not to slow up the interview, the interviewer should be prepared to write at the same time as the respondent talks.

This may prevent him from watching the expressions of the respondent but some adjustments have got to be made. The interviewer may also use common abbreviations. He may also use a telegraphic style of recording. In doing so, the interviewer must not make the recording incomprehensible to the coders.

One final point related to successful interviewing is, how to minimize bias introduced by the interviewer. Known as the interviewer-“bias”, it refers to systematic differences from interviewer to interviewer or occasionally systematic errors on the part of the interviewers in the selection of the samples (e.g., in quota sampling where the selection of interviewees is left to the interviewers), in asking questions, eliciting and recording responses.

Much of what we call interviewer-bias, can be more correctly described as interviewer- differences which are inherent in the fact that interviewers are human beings and not machines and thus they do not work identically or infallibly.

The fact that respondents too are human beings with differing perceptions, judgements, etc., simply enhances the differences that would occur if different interviewers were dealing with physical rather than human materials. It is too much to expect, therefore, that the interviewers will return complete, comparable and valid reports.

Even assuming an unbiased selection of respondents, bias in the interview-situation may stem from two sources:

(a) Respondent’s perception of the interviewer.

(b) Interviewer’s perception of the respondent.

‘Perception’ here points to the manner in which the relation between the interviewer and respondent is influenced and modified by their wishes, expectations and personality structure.

There is a sizable experimental evidence to prove that bias may result under certain conditions in spite of anything the interviewer may do to eliminate it. Respondents have been shown to frequently answer differently when interviewed by people from different social strata or ethnic group or nationality group. For example, the working-class respondents are less likely to talk freely to middle-class interviewers.

The magnitude of these effects naturally varies with the way in which the respondents perceive the situation. The biasing effects can often be reduced by altering the respondent’s perception of the situation, e.g., by assuring him that his identity will not be revealed but these effects can seldom be completely eliminated.

The interviewers should dress inconspicuously so that their appearance will not adversely sensitize certain categories of respondents.

The staff in a large-scale research project should be instructed to interview the respondent privately (unless the whole group is to be interviewed) so that his opinions will not be affected by the presence of some third person and to adopt an informal and conversational attitude in an effort to achieve the best possible ‘report.’

It should be noted that not all interview-biasing effects operate through the respondent’s perception by an interviewer. Some respondents may be totally immune to the most crucial biasing’s characteristics of the interviewer. The other dimension, we must consider in this context, is the interviewer’s perception of the respondent.

This is as important a source of bias as the respondent’s perception of the interviewer. No matter how standardized the schedule and how rigidly the interviewer is instructed, he still has much opportunity to exercise freedom of choice during the actual interview.

Thus, it is often his perception of the respondent that determines the manner in which he asks questions, the way in which he probes, his classification of responses to pre-coded questions and his recording of verbatim answers.

The interviewers often have strong expectations from respondents and as such, stereotypes are likely to come into play during the interview. On the basis of their past experience, judgements or prior answers received from other respondents, the interviewers may often quite unconsciously assume that they are inferior to him or that they are hostile, deceptive or ignorant, etc.

Such expectations will affect their performance. For example, a ‘No response’ from an educated well-to-do respondent may be probed into on the assumption that an opinion may be lurking somewhere or the interviewer may think that the respondents do not mean what they say.

Experiments have shown that the interviewers tend to select from long verbatim answers those parts that most closely conform to their expectations, beliefs or opinions and discard the rest.

An important source of bias arises from the interviewer’s perception of the situation. If he sees the results of the study as a possible threat to his interests, he is likely to introduce bias. Such difficulties can be overcome by proper motivation and supervision.

The interviewers being human, such biasing’s factors can never be overcome completely. Of Course, their effects can be reduced by standardizing the interview so that the interviewer has as little free choice as possible. If interviewers are given clear and standard instructions on questioning procedures, on the classification of responses etc., their biases will have lesser chances of operation.

It should not be overlooked, however, that if the interviewer’s freedom is restricted, correspondingly, the opportunities for effective use of his insight are restricted too. The more responsibilities the interviewer is given for questioning and evaluating the respondent’s opinions, the more likely it is that bias will result. This calls for a very careful selection of some middle course.

In so far as bias, in the sense of different interviewers not returning exactly the same responses from equivalent respondents, can never be totally eliminated, the main responsibility of the director of the research project is to select, train and supervise his staff in such a way that any net result of bias will be at a minimum.

He must be aware of the possibilities of bias at various points so that he is in a position to discount their effects in his analysis.